December 6, 2006 – 6:11 pm
There are calls in the press today for more online mapping standards after the tragic disappearance of CNET Reporter James Kim. Kim was on a family vacation last week in Oregon when he took a little used logging road in a futile effort to take a shortcut to the Oregon coast. Kim’s family was rescued. But Kim, who ventured away from the car to seek help, is still missing.
My friend and mentor Gary Arlen reports that one TV newscast blamed Google Maps, saying that Mapquest is “better” for small country roads…with warnings of which roads not to use. I had a similar experience with Google Maps this summer. But no one really knows which map service Kim was using at this point – and of course, it doesn’t matter.
The coda to The LA Times coverage this morning said it all. “I don’t understand why MapQuest and Google put those so called ‘short cuts’ on the maps,” a woman named Laurie, who said she lives in the area, wrote to CNET. “I am sure that a human does not drive on these roads before they put them on the Web. I hope that can change. Please find James alive.”
December 5, 2006 – 10:32 pm
Media General, the publisher of The Tampa Tribune, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Winston-Salem Journal, in addition to 22 community dailies, is the eighth newspaper company to join Yahoo’s HotJobs consortia. The addition of MG’s 25 papers means that the consortia’s roster now encompasses 201 papers in 40 states.
The company had been engaged in the Yahoo talks all during the multi-month negotiation process, but wasn’t ready to sign up in time for the deal’s pre-Thanksgiving announcement. We expect that it won’t be the last one in, either. Twelve companies were involved in the initial talks, but to date, only Freedom Newspapers has taken an alternative path (choosing to go with Monster).
While MG is the most recent company to officially sign up with the consortia, it knows Yahoo’s skillsets as well as any newspaper, according to Media General Interactive President Neal Fondren. He noted that MG has been upselling its recruitment classifieds to HotJobs in Tampa for over a year. The existing relationship with Tampa means that it will be the fastest MG property to get up and running with HotJobs. The other properties will be up in a matter of months, he said.
December 4, 2006 – 8:40 pm
YellowPages.com, the joint venture between AT&T Yellow Pages and BellSouth Intelliventures, appears poised to shake up the world of directory assistance by picking up InFreeDA, the provider of 1(800)411-Metro. InFreeDA founder and CEO Michael Loftus, who spoke at Kelsey’s ILM conference last week in Philadelphia, had no comment on the rumors. But several Web links from his company now lead to yellowpages.com.
Loftus did confirm however, that his company has been in financial straits since it was unsuccessful in winning new financing from its prime backer, Hummer Winblad. “They only pick two of ten investments” for continued support, he said. “And we were not among them.”
If the rumors pan out, YellowPages.com is joining a free DA industry that is likely to cannibalize existing DA revenues, which pull in $8 billion. But it is also projected to triple its existing usage. According to Jingle Neworks’ CEO George Garrick, free DA currently makes up 3 percent of the Directory Assistance calls that are made today, and is on pace to serve 130 million calls this year. In 2007, Garrick projects that 300 million free DA calls will be made, giving it roughly 10 percent of total DA usage.
December 4, 2006 – 7:52 pm
AutoTrader is expanding beyond “new” and “used car” ads into “auto services” and “used parts.” The move promises to put a lot of pressure on other online auto sites, especially eBay Motors, which is preparing a relaunch that will move it beyond used parts to include services, local ads and other ecommerce.
CEO Chip Perry, a keynoter at The Kelsey Group’s ILM conference in Philadelphia last week, said that eBay and other car portals haven’t really caused any problems for AutoTrader. While the Cox Enterprises-owned 1,600 employee site doesn’t release specific data, Perry claims it gets “four times” the usage of newspaper consortia-owned cars.com, and is bigger “than the next two car sites combined.” Moreover, the site is “easing in on The Top 10 list of Internet sites, and is “one of the Top 2-3 fastest growing sites.”
Perry said that AutoTrader’s advantage has been its exclusive focus on advertising, as opposed to lead generation and other forms of ecommerce. Some car sites get lead fees of $25 per car, but only 5-10 percent of those leads convert into sales, he says. That translates to $500 per car sold. Advertising on AutoTrader costs closer to $100 per car. “Why would we de-volve ourselves to a Pay-Per-Click model?” he asks.
November 28, 2006 – 7:01 pm
Monster has fallen off its leadership perch, hit hard by CareerBuilder’s heavy media spend and its extremely effective bundling of print/online ads. But by most counts, it is still fairly equal with CareerBuilder. It is certainly well ahead of Yahoo Hot Jobs, which made its own splash last week by teaming with 176 newspapers.
Monster has now asserted itself once again. In part, it is doing so by pushing very hard via a slew of deals with newspapers – an industry that it had recently scorned. It previously announced a deal with The Philadelphia Inquirer, and now has announced deals with The Orange County Register, along with several smaller papers that are also owned by Freedom; as well as with the North Jersey Media Group, and The Wilkes Barre Times Leader. The deals have been made by Peter Newton, who formerly led the development of bostonworks.com for The Boston Globe.
An executive close to the new signings said that it basically came down to working with Monster or Yahoo. So-called “White Label” solutions by various vendors were not really considered because they lacked compelling networks. Our source told us that Yahoo and Monster were fairly equal on basic listings, but Monster proved much more generous for upsells. Monster was also felt to be “better” than the others in terms of features, name recognition and prestige — although it could have gone either way.
November 27, 2006 – 7:26 pm
Vertical sites carved out from broader Yellow Pages categories are one of those things that make tons of sense – although the only surefire winners at this point seem to be the lawyer sites. What most of these sites have in common is the passionate interest of their founders. The business hypothesis is these categories are under-served by Yellow Pages (and newspapers) and get just a fraction of the traffic and ads they’d get with a stronger focus.
I work with a number of verticals. One is Happyhours.com, the brainchild of Stephen Gilberg, a liquor industry marketer well known for local theme parties and the like (“Spirits of Mexico,” etc.). Gilberg’s site, and its accompanying e-newsletter, serves up information on booze and drink specialties, the locations that serve them, and the industry’s marketing trends. It includes a burgeoning city guide concept.
Another vertical that I work with is Lawn and Garden Yellow Pages, which was started out of a similar passion by plant business veteran Steve Cissel. The LGYP site has over 500 categories, and 10,000 plant images. In addition to the nuance of its categories (“perennials,” not “plants”), Lawn and Garden YP enables users to look up plants, and find them locally.
November 22, 2006 – 9:51 pm
PowerOne Media, once a major vendor for small and medium-sized newspapers, has sold off its recruitment site, CareerSite to three of its newspaper owners: Media News Group, Hearst and Lee Enterprises. The companies are expected to shut CareerSite down after an 18 month transition period, per rumor (see comment below) and try to convert its […]
